How were muslims treated in colonial America?

You are somewhat correct.

Around the colonial era, the golden age of the Islamic Empire was dead and dying for the past several decades. However it was still considered of the most powerful and wealthy empires on earth at the time. Even though it's governments had by then grown extremely corrupt and deviated heavily from its early days.

That being the status quo, the several hundred successful year reign of Islam was seen even by the founding fathers as a respectable entity, so much so that when it came time to write the constitution, the Quran (not the bible) is referenced by Thomas Jefferson himself in writing the constitution of the US. Taking from the Quran Islamic secular principles that which had not graced any other empires prior to then. Such as freedom of speech and religion and property and business.

Yes, the crusade against Muslims was still active in the same sense it is today so there was a lot of propaganda out to make all Muslims look like pirates/terrorists. But to say that all Americans were racist against Muslims and saw them as pirates is to say that all Americans see them as terrorists today. Educated Americans like the forefathers knew beyond what was in mainstream media, and saw Muslims in an even better light than they're commonly seen today due to the fact that they understood that Muslims had a respectable civilization at one point or another..a fact completely lost to so many even educated people today.

Yes there were Muslim pirates but the slave trade was 90%+ dominated by the East Indies trading company which is of European Jewish origin, whom boasted about their monopoly in the business as you can find out with a simple Google search.

/r/history Thread Parent